Tag Archives: Bitter

I thought today I would share the coolest collectible that no one thought of. Except my dad.

Shot glasses.

You know, all those kitschy tourist stop ones that you see when you go on vacation. The kind you pick up for Joe back home because you forgot to get him a real souvenir from your trip to Idaho. My dad actually collects them.

He picks them up when we go on family vacations and now, all us adult kids pick him up one or two when we go someplace neat on our own vacations.

I can see the awe blooming in your mind as you realize the countless possibilities you’ve been blind to all these years. Those kitschy mugs in tourist traps (which I personally collect because you can never have too many mugs), those key chains, or maybe you’re going to go outside the box. Maybe you’ll collect water from local water ways in jars to bring back home to display.

It’s just a really cool conversation piece really and I want more people to know about how neat it is. Like you come into the living room and there’s these shelves just full of shot glasses. Your eye is drawn to them. You start talking about them. He talks about where the cooler ones came from, you talk about the places you’ve been. Boom. New friendship right there.

I know what you’re thinking now. ‘I used to hate when I got those stupid shot glasses. It was like they forgot about me!’ Turn it into a collect now. Set them up on a shelf and make them wall art. Turn the bad into something cool.

One of the core media beliefs of witchcraft is the infamous ‘devil worship’. Of course, this is a product of Christianity demonizing (ha, see what I did there) witchcraft, Wiccan, and pagan beliefs.

So what does Wicca and paganism have to with witchcraft? To begin with, it revolves around the tradition of witchcraft. Many witches of yore were not Christians because Christianity had yet to become an established religion yet. So of course, many of the cultures that witches and wise-women were from were polytheistic cultures (i.e. the Greeks, ancient Celts, ancient Egypt…). This is why many witches are seen as ‘devil-worshipers’ because as Christianity became the Thing, the powers that be decided that people going to the hedge-witches of the area where pulling away valuable worshipers (read: warm bodies that could pay for the church itself; looking at you, Catholicism with your ‘indulgences’). So they began to demonize witches every where.

Now, you’re asking yourself, and me, what the hell does this have to do with witchcraft now? Why am I going on and on about something that seems boring to your bright-eyed witchy interest?

Honestly, it’s partly because to know where you are going you have to know where you have been. You have to be able to look back at past struggles and understand how and why we are able to be where we are today. The other part is that you have understand other’s perceptive within the witch community.

Regarding Wicca and paganism in relation to witchcraft in the modern age, it’s become less of a requirement to practice and more of a choice. So you can practice witchcraft secularly, or under the guidance of whatever god you worship, whether it be one of the major religious figures or one of the old gods.

But that’s the beauty of witchcraft; it’s the best tool for spirituality outside of a traditional religious experience. Most witches worship whatever gods they please or if they’re Wiccan, it’s an environmental-based religion where you honor the environment and nature and hope to attune yourself to it.

So you don’t have to Wiccan or pagan to practice witchcraft. Witchcraft is just the acts associated with spiritual development, the occult, and understanding the mysteries of the natural world yet unexplored. Secular witchcraft is the practice of witchcraft without using spiritual means, such as not involving deities or religious aspects of spell work.

There’s no right or wrong way to practice witchcraft, and there’s no right or wrong way to investigate your own spiritual development, whether that’s with the aid of know gods or unknown gods, names lost to time.

What I have come to hate most about working as an hourly manager in retail is watching my store manager lose his shit over every little thing.

Now, he’s usually a chill guy. He sits in his office doing who knows what and leaves most of us alone to do our jobs. But if we have a walk scheduled by our market or regional managers (both of which are over him), he starts going batshit.

Lately, he told us that we were one of the only stores in our market that hit our budget goals for the previous month. Which means our regional manager is stopping by for a visit. While my store manager believes this is a ‘good things’ visit, I know it’s really because throughout the entire holiday season our store was a shitshow, so how are we suddenly in the green now. I have a feeling this upcoming visit is nothing more than a check to see what we’re doing wrong to look so good on paper. So I’ll tell you all, since complaining to corporate got one of my previous supervisors fired.

Half of our hourly managers are too busy cleaning up each other’s messes that it’s a miracle that anything gets done. How? Any ‘non-essential’ managers (read: anyone not over a food department) gets pulled to work on the seasonal departments, like holiday or garden area prep work.

Our hourly managers are consistantly told by their salaried assistant managers to ‘plug’ product so the shelves look full (this is when a product is not in it’s proper location on a shelf, usually just to make the shelf look full or to reduce then number of boxes of overstocked freight.) They believe that be making the shelves look extra full and the backroom area looking spotless of overstock, then the regional/market managers will believe that our store is running efficiently.

We get asked to rearrange our entire schedules last minute to come in on the weekends to work in our areas. However, most salaried members of management will not have to rearrange their schedules ever. And because we are currently in a ‘no overtime’ budget, then we cannot stay late, and our days off get shifted to inopportune times later in the week.

Hourly managers have a specific schedule they are supposed to follow to keep their departments running. 9 times out of 10, we are not allowed to follow that schedule because our assistant managers pull us for tasks they can easily do themselves instead of sitting in the office all day on their asses. And then, we, the hourly managers, get our asses chewed for not follow the schedule because we have to do 20 other things in our day.

From what I can understand, we look good on paper, but as an employee day in and day out, I think we look awful. And I know people complain about it all the time, because old people have nothing better to do apparently. But this doesn’t excuse our managers from doing their jobs and actually helping us get shit done.

When you first start reading Tarot cards, many people recommend starting a Tarot Journal.

So what is a Tarot Journal?

A Tarot Journal is basically exactly what is sounds like. It’s a journal where you write out things you learn about Tarot. Many use it as a daily journal, where they have a daily draw and interpret a card for the day, then journal about the day. Many use it as a reference for draws they have done, such as a draw done last week about their cousin’s wedding and referenced now a week before the wedding, to see what the cards may have referenced.

So what’s the significance in a Tarot Journal? Why should you get one?

Think of it this way; would you walk into school without a notebook to take notes about your classes? Would you go to a conference or a lecture and not take something to write notes with? Probably not. So give Tarot the same courtesy you would a teacher or a speaker at a presentation.

Maybe you won’t get anything from a reading, just like sometimes you walk into a class and it’s a movie day. And sometimes it’ll go over your head because you’re diving in too deep without understanding the basics, like trying to do calculus with only 3rd grade multiplication tables. But that’s where your journal comes in.

I been using mine for daily draws, to help interpret cards, to jot down interesting spreads I see on Pinterest, or to jot down notes on cards I haven’t drawn yet or difficult cards I’ve had to delve deeper into. And if nothing else, you can use your Tarot Journal just for the witchy aesthetic. Use it like a regular journal to help keep track of how you feel before and after a reading, to track which cards keep showing up for you, complicated spreads broken down for easy of use, deck you want to buy later, or neato little things you figure out along the way.

There’s no wrong way learn and Tarot Journals are a sure bet to help you keep your new knowledge in line and organized so you can actually reference later if you need to, or keep it around for friends or family to reference down the road. If you don’t know where to start, look into Bullet Journalling and just come up with your own spreads to suit your witchy needs.

We all know what it feels like when you’ve lazed about on the couch for few days and your body feels like shit so you start doing stuff like exercise again. But what about when your brain starts feeling mushy and gross and uncoordinated? What about after you feel brain-dead after finals and have to get back into the right mental space for the next semester? What about after you finish a big project and your brain just wants to sleep?

However amazing these tricks may be, I’m not talking about clinical depression which can present some of the same symptoms of being ‘brain-dead’, so please take with a grain of salt if you do have depression.

Here are some tips that help me get my brain going again after a rough night or long break from school.

Step 1: Make some tea or coffee. Make whichever you don’t usually have, to switch it up. Once you have your cup of hot liquids, take a deep breath and just sit with your cup for a few minutes, 2-5 tops. Let your brain just relax for minute, don’t think about what comes next or what you have to get done. This is your break time, so take a real break.

Step 2a: If you’re still at work, make a list of every task you have to get done for the day. Include anything that takes over 5 minutes. Now, the list is not something you have to complete by the end of the day; it is something to get you focused for the rest of the day while your brain feels mushy.

Step 2b: When you get a period of extended free time, like after work or before bed, take a long bath (or shower if you don’t have a bathtub). Take the extra time for a face mask or exfoliating or whatever (no shame in face-masks if you’re a guy; every needs to take care of their skin properly). This is the time you use to be ‘brain-dead’. Most tasks in the bathroom should be pretty mindless by now, like brushing your teeth or hair. So let your mind have a little rest now that you don’t have any real pressing matters (we’re going to ignore our priorities for a bit right now).

Step 3: Now your brain has had a little break, get those juices flowing again. Jot in a journal or fantasize about an exotic trip you want to take some day. Get creative. Let your mind wander to all sorts of crazy things. You’ve probably quit imagining since you were high school. So let your mental legs stretch and think about something amazing or wild. Write or draw or color in a coloring book. Even if it’s super shitty.

Step 4: If your brain still feels a bit mushy and not quite refreshed, then make a list of everything you want to learn; a new language, or a new craft, or maybe you want to learn how something works, or maybe a new trade like electrical work or carpentry. Once you have your list, start working through it. Give all these things a chance and get excited about learning again.

Your brain is starving for something new and interesting and it wants to learn. You know that whole ‘can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ thing is total shit, right? Get into something new and learn more. Even if it doesn’t pan out, or it doesn’t click. Have you always wanted to try baking wedding cakes? Take a class. Even if it doesn’t work out, your brain will feel better because you tried something new and you tried to learn something new.

Reading the cards is the most daunting part of the Tarot. You can buy deck after deck and read book after blog after forum, but you have to actually pick up the cards to learn it.

Tarot is as much about feeling than it is memorizing the cards.

I like to draw back to all those years in school when your English teacher would try to get you look at a book and draw some kind of meaning from the book. The same is true of Tarot cards. Each time you look at the card you have to draw some meaning form it.

For example, if you read the Great Gatsby in school, you know that the central plot is about a man reconnecting with his childhood sweetheart that ends in a tragic fate for many involved in both of their circles, as narrated by the man’s neighbor. But with each reading and each critical analysis, you can draw so much symbolism and meaning from the scenes depicted within the book, like the famous symbol of the green dock light being a beacon of hope, or the symbolic line between old money and new money.

The same is true of Tarot cards. You can memorize that the Two of Pentacles is a man holding two coins with pentacles on them bound by a loop of rope. But depending on the context, this card takes on many different meanings, So not only does intuition play a a vital part of reading Tarot cards, but so does critical thinking to help delve into a card and it’s secrets.

But you still have to learn what the cards mean as well. You can’t dive into Harry Potter without having read Dr. Seuss first. You have to take baby steps first before you run a marathon.

So where to start?

Well, practice makes perfect. So all those blogs and books you’ve already read are great. They’re going to give you a solid foundation to start learning organically.

So start with Daily Draws, where you draw a card a day and interpret the card.

Learn how to do spreads and document how the cards and your results turn out. (I’ll talk more about Tarot Journals later)

And when you get stuck, turn to the handy dandy little guide within your deck. The Little White Book.

Now, I’ve come to understand from numerous sources that the Little White Book, or LWB, can be a handy guide for fresh-faced beginners like myself, but many advise that the LWB should be taken into consideration with a grain of salt. Many long-practicing Tarot readers swear by learning the deck from heart and allowing the intuition to grow with the deck as you develop your own meanings. But we’re not experts yet. So reference the book all you want until the card makes sense or reach out forums and ask others within the community what they see.

So to sum it all up:

Practice makes perfect

Don’t be afraid to ask for help or guidance (this is a really nice community and people are ready and willing to help guide us young naive witches)

Write it down (look at some of my study tips in my student life category)

This is simultaneously my most favorite and most hated part of a semester.

While it’s great to see the progress you’ve made towards graduating, it is also the most stressful part that you have to complete in a short window of time.

I hate that it comes during the middle of the semester, right when you have 20 other priorities to take care of, but if you don’t plan right then, then you end up registering for classes you don’t need or have at shitty times in the day. And sometimes you have to have advising codes from your adviser, so now you have to plan a meeting with your precious open time to trek across campus to have a 20 minute meeting with an adviser who sees you as a name on a paper (not to harsh on them, but if you’re like me, you don’t have time to go to a meeting every week with an adviser instead of studying or going to office hours or going to study groups or working so there’s no way to get to know each other)

So how do I plan my semester when I have a shit ton on my plate?

I plan in advance.

I set up a spreadsheet before the semester starts and spend a day planning out my course loads. My school has several references to check for being on track for graduation, what typical course loads for majors should look like, and graduation requirements for each major or program. If these materials aren’t easily accessible through your program’s website or the Register’s office website, then email your adviser. They’ll be more than happy to send you the materials.

Now that you have everything in front of you, break down your course load for the next semesters. My college provides a general breakdown of how each semester per year should look, e.i. what course a freshman should be taking for their first semester or what courses an on-track senior should be taking their last semester. If this isn’t available to you, you should still be able to access a required course list and the register’s office to see the pre-reqs and availability of the course.

From here, I work out the expected course load for the next semesters (however many you have left). Take into account courses you can take earlier than expected (from good placement exams or concurrent enrollment, or AP exams that gave college credit) or classes you’ll have to put off until after you finish the pre-reqs.

Now that you have the plan, put this aside until you need to start prepping for registering for the next semester. From the list of classes you think you need to take for the next semester, see what are available for registering or what has time conflicts with a required class.

It’s a bit of an involved process to set up the plan, but it’s worth it when you get to the middle of the semester and you need to register for the next semester because everything is ready to go. The list is there and ready for you to reference when needed. It also really helps when you go into your advising meetings because you know exactly what you need to do on your end to achieve your goals.

But once you have the plan in place, it makes it so much easier to work harder knowing that you’re not going to have spend 3+ hours flipping back and forth between 6 different tabs to try to register for classes, especially when you should really be studying for midterms.

This is also a good time to take into account all the things you sucked at this semester and plan ahead for the next. So maybe that way of note taking didn’t work out for you, or maybe you spent too much time procrastinating on flash cards than on reading the material. So work harder for next semester; research note-taking strategies, look into apps that disable your phone for study time, get better pens. Find what’s going to make you better in the long-run.

You see these damn things all over the internet. Those 2-week or 30 day challenges to help cut back on spending. And I’ll admit, some do work. I’ve tried them. But some also don’t take into account what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck and barely making enough to make ends meet.

So here’s my Spend Less Challenge for people like me, who try really hard to keep track of your money but somewhere between a little pick-me-up cookie at lunch and extra gas after running your mom to the airport, you seem to be short right before every payday.

This is a 30 day challenge to get the ball rolling, but really you can keep it going however long you see fit. Start at the first of the month or right before payday for the best effects.

Prep steps:

Get an empty coffee can (i got tons, of course) or an old piggy bank or a jar or a cup. Any kind of receptacle that can hold all the junk you’re going to now take out of your wallet. You heard me. Into this receptacle, put all the loose change and credit cards that you have in your wallet. You can keep any bills and you debit card (or one if you have multiple).

Take stock of what you have in your kitchen pantry and fridge. Then make a list of staple items you need (rice, cooking stock, milk, etc.). Now make a meal plan for the next two weeks. Put the ingredients onto the list. Now shop and DO NOT STRAY FROM THE LIST PERIOD.

Pay all applicable bills now while you have money. The credit card bills, the utilities, rent, car payment. Anything that will allow you to pay early, pay while you have money.

Now comes the fun parts. You are prepped and ready. Here are the rules you have to follow throughout the month.

Rules:

Credit cards are to remain in the jar unless it is a life-threatening emergency.

You can only eat out lunch once a week. You can only eat out dinner once a week. Pick wisely. (this means you have to pack your lunches)

Take out $20 a week from your bank as your allowance. This is the only money you can spend on fun things (a smoothie to treat yourself, a neat little figurine for your desk, etc.) FOR THE WEEK. When it is gone, it is gone. Whatever happens to be left over at the end of the week, put into the jar of change.

The cash in the jar can only be used in life-threatening emergencies, unless the end of the month has come. At the end of the month, you must take the jar to the bank and split it 60/40: 60% into savings, 40% into checking.

The debit card can be used but not for anything fun. E.i. if you know that you filled up your car on payday but will need to fill up again before the next payday, then the debit card can be used. The debit card cannot be used to buy that neat video game you’ve been waiting to come out for 6 months, that happens to come out between paydays.

Grocery shop as close to payday as possible. Make a list, meal plan for the next pay period, do not abandon the list. While making dinner each night, use some of the downtime (like waiting for water to boil) to start packing your lunch for the next day. Throw in everything that doesn’t have to be refrigerated if your fridge is packed or fully pack it so it’s ready to grab and go in the morning.

At the end of the month, compare how your bank account looks now instead of previous months. It may not look like much at the moment, but if you continue to do this, then you’ll start to see where all your money went in little onesie-twosie purchases.

When I see that I have more money than usual I try to make extra payments to my student loans or credit cards to keep that snowball running. Maybe you want to put that extra money into savings. Maybe you want to use that extra money to take your mom out to dinner because you’ve been a shitty kid lately.

This is the hard shit that people don’t talk about anymore. We accept it with careless shrugs and ‘what can you do’ smile. But that’s how They keep you in line and under thumb (you know Them, the government, the insurance agencies, the credit card companies, the banks, the corporations,the people controlling your money and how you spend it). So if you’re even half as much of a bitter hag as me, then let’s make all their lives harder by spending less and living less so they can’t tell us how to live.

A life half-lived is still better than a life wasted under someone else’s control. Control your money and you control your world.

The Courts have special properties in Tarot. While every other Minor Arcana card does depict people, the Court cards depict one particular person.

The Court cars refer to the monarchy within each Suit. Each Suit has 4 court cards; page, knight, queen, and king.

Each card rules over a different aspect of the Suit itself. The King is the King of that particular Suit and so on. For example, the King of Cups is the king of emotion, which Cups represent.

From what I’ve read across the many forums and blogs, Court cards can be difficult to learn because interpreting what they represent in a reading can lead to difficulties. Many of these difficulties reside in how the Court cards are used to represent a person in the reading. For example, the reading may revolve around family issues and the Queen of Cups may represent a female figure within the family, like a mother or grandmother.

But some of the difficulties also reside when the Court cards do not refer to a person within the reading. When a Court card doesn’t refer to a person you can always check the LWB included with the deck, or you may have to use intuition to try to try to divine the meaning in relation to the question.

While Court cards can be difficult, without them however, the deck is incomplete. Perhaps they just need some extra study work to understand. Or maybe their point is to be a bit fluid, to allow them to fill the roles needed in a reading, whether that means portraying a person or sending a message.

Because of this difficulty with the nature of the Court cards, I’m going to delve into each individually when the time comes. Hopefully we can crack the code on these pesky cards.

I understand that this looks like it’s going to be just a typical girly gripe about my nails. But it’s really not. I promise.

Since I haves started working in retail, my hands, fingers, and nails have taken an absolute beating. I’m constantly smashing my fingers or pinching them between boxes and hard places. My nails I constantly break off (painfully most times) as I try to wrestle boxes open that are glued, not taped, shut. I constantly have to baby at least one finger with a cardboard cut or because my cuticle is pushed so far back that it splits open every few hours and bleeds.

And my skin in general has been absolute shit. I already live in a very dry climate and winters here suck ass. Even before working retail, I had a whole hand routine every night to treat the skin hurting and cracking just from being dry. Now I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate basic first aid into my routine. It’s not going well.

I honestly am very lucky if I make it through the week with only breaking 3 nails. And when I mean breaking, I mean breaking down to the nail bed; I’m not talking about the nail is brittle and breaks off looking my fingers looking uneven.

But the worst part is that when I do get any time off, like my weekends, my fingers heal just enough to stop being painful and to stop bleeding every time I ram them into everything. And then I get to go back to work and do it all over again.

But mostly, we’ve come to notice something very important about the girls at work with their nails. If your nails look anything like mine, where they look like shit, they are all broken off and blunt and growing at different lengths (because they got broken at different times), then you probably come in and do your job. Because you don’t break nails off doing nothing.

But if you have those pretty, fancy acrylic nails that stick from here to Timbuktu, then you are most definitely not doing your job of opening boxes and stocking shelves. I’m not ragging on women who have their nails that way, I understand that they are very pretty and make your day better by having something so nice in your life. But when you’re working in an environment where you constantly need to use your hands to do your job, I can’t understand how having long nails would help. Especially knowing the issue I have experienced from stocking boxes. Because you constantly have to rip open boxes or jam your nails under the edges of a box to open it. There’s no way in hell you’re doing your job with your fancy acrylics.

Maybe in an office environment, having fancy acrylic nails would be 20x more helpful. I never had them when I worked as an admin assistant, but I know many women love having them for typing and sorting documents.

But working in a grocery retailer is not the place for fancy acrylic nails or a full face of makeup. Period.

To lighten the mood a bit after I’ve basically called out 90% of my co-workers for their bad fashion sense, here’s I do to keep my hands ready and willing to strangle a man.

Every night apply a heavy-duty hand lotion. People will recommend items like Bag Balm, O’Keefe’s, etc. I use just petroleum jelly with cocoa butter mixed in. You get name brand or off-brand. I know everyone is a little gun-shy of petroleum jelly but it’s that or corn huskers lotion, which works but takes forever to dry well enough for you to use your hands.

Don’t be afraid to bandage your fingers. If your nail beds are aching from getting cardboard shoved under your nail, then bandage them up with regular old bandage before bed and for every day after that they continue to hurt. I usually pick up some of the cutesy kid design Band-Aids because they’re at least fun and colorful. And because I’m an adult, I do what I want.

Don’t forget to take your vitamins. I know you’re probably poor if you’re working retail. Me too, man. So I bought some vitamins to help boost what I’m not getting in my diet since I’m mostly eating coffee and McDonald’s fries 4 days a week. Now, I’m not going to say that vitamins will solve all your problems or fix your diet, but the placebo effect of ‘I was healthy, I took my vitamins’ will help you keep an eye on what you really put into your body, which will come back to helping your skin and nails look better.

Wear gloves in the cold. This is a no-exception rule now. I know that sometimes you don’t think that it’s as cold as it really is and you can manage without a pair of gloves from your front door to the car. But if your area gets as dry as mine, you will feel it sucking all the good hard-won moisture from your hands as you walk the 30 feet from your front door to your car. Then your hands are going to ache all day at work because the cold set into your bones and stole the moisture from your skin causing the skin to crack and old cuts to open up again.

I can’t understand why you would spend $50+ dollars on a manicure and acrylic nails just to go work for minimum wage where 90% of your job requires use of your hands and nails.

Let’s get right into the nitty-gritty of it all. Tarot has some basic rules that you have to follow to get any result. Like being on a diet; to lose the weight you have to follow some rules.

So what are the rules? Well, it kind of depends on who you ask. One tradition that many are choosing to ignore is that you have to be gifted your first deck. I think it would be a great tradition to uphold, but if you’re like me, then you don’t know any practicing witches yet. Especially within your family, like mine, a family of very white, Christian people. So it would’ve been a cold day in Hell before I received my first deck via gift. So many people who are starting out buy their own decks (or are forced to buy their own deck really).

So here are some hard and fast rules that generally do apply to Tarot.

You gotta put some energy into your deck to get them to work. What does this mean? Well, you got to put some spiritual batteries in those motherfuckers for them to really start pumping out anything. So how do you charge the batteries? The most common way is to just handle them; shuffle them and put them back in order to get a feel of that specific deck and their own energy. Or put them in natural light, like moonlight or sunlight (i prefer moonlight so the colors don’t fade as fast, but if you’re going to be around a little sunbathing won’t hurt for a few minutes). Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘what the fuck do you mean ‘charge your cards?’ So the simple explanation is to think in terms of physics. Everything is made up of molecules which vibrate, so you have to use other forms of energy to get your card molecules to vibrate in a frequency your body and spirit can work with. This means using energy from the sun (solar power anyone?) or your own body heat (thermal energy?) to get in sync with your cards.

You gotta store them right and treat them right. This is more of a common sense rule. Many people suggest storing your deck in a silk or cotton bag, sometimes with crystals to cleanse the energy (I’m not a big crystal believer yet, but I know there is a shit ton of lore behind crystals and the unexplained, so maybe something in there is true?). I personally store mine in antique headscarves from my great-grandma. Now, these are specifically cotton or silk (like everyone else says) but they are good quality and because of the age, help me to treat the cards with reverence and respect. If the deck comes in a sturdy box, they can also just be stored in the box, which will keep them safe from unintended damage.

You gotta use them. Crazy idea I know. But think about it; the only way to get better with them is to use them. The only way to get used to a deck is to USE THEM. I get the whole appeal of buying like 20 decks, because there are so many with amazing art out there. I understand just wanting them for the aesthetic of the deck itself and maybe just keeping it for decor because it’s so damn pretty and you feel bad about using it. But think about all the nice things that will never get used because of this thinking; all the fancy dishes or amazing linens or luxury cars that sit around because people are afraid of them wearing out. But why have them just to collect dust instead of actually using them for their intended purpose and bringing a little bit of joy to your life with the beauty of the deck.

You have to decide if you will let other people touch your cards. This sounds like a weird rule but, hear me out. The actual rule is that you really shouldn’t let other people touch your cards at all because it will mess with your deck’s energy. Personally, I don’t mind if it’s someone I know personally (like my mom or my boyfriend) because I know, 1) where their hands have been prior to them touching my cards so I know they won’t get dirty, 2) I know them and their vibes, 3) that I’m in an intimate setting where I will have the time and opportunity to properly cleanse the deck’s energy after. I can understand why some people want no one else to touch their decks period. It is very intimate because of the time and energy invested in the deck, but also I can understand why you wouldn’t want strangers to touch your deck, especially when you don’t know their vibe or if their hands are even clean, or if you aren’t going to have the time to restore your energy or your deck’s energy (say running errands or back-to-back readings at your sister’s bridal shower). But in my opinion, this is a decision you will have to make based on how you feel about your cards. Maybe it’s a deck-specific choice or a blanket policy.

Practice, practice, practice. This one is self-explanatory. You have to practice to get good at reading the cards. You have to practice to get a feel for the deck. You have to practice just as with any new skill or knowledge. You can’t learn advanced calculus overnight (trust me I tried and it didn’t work), so don’t expect to get the hang of Tarot overnight (unless you share how the hell you did it)

You have to have a Space™. Many people agree that you have to a space specifically for learning Tarot, a space you’ve cleansed with sage or incense and devoted entirely for your spiritual journey. Knowing that some people live in small studio apartments or are trying to hide their witchcraft from their family that they live with (or judgy roommates), I think you just have to be able to have a little corner you can slip into or even just a mental zone. I look at doing Tarot like a student; sometimes you won’t have the place to study and lay out all your materials, but if you have the time while you ride the bus or eat your lunch, then you can still study, or in this case, work with your deck. Maybe it just means shuffling the minor arcana while you ride the bus. Maybe it means doing one-card draws about the crime drama you’re obligated to watch with your significant other. Maybe it means waiting until the kids are in bed to pirate the kitchen table for your extensive spreads. I don’t think you have to have an actual corner to practice in, but definitely a mental corner.

These are just some of the rules I’ve seen floating around the witchcraft community online. Maybe there are others I just haven’t discovered yet. There are totally ones I’m going to ignore because I don’t see how they apply productively to me.

Let me know in the comments below some of the things you know or learned. Or to give me a written example of all the ways I’m fucking up.

You know those days when it’s cold af out and you just want to crawl under 20 blankets to escape the cold that has seeped into your bones. Well do I have the cure for you. It’s easy and delicious and alcoholic. The best of all worlds.

Prep time: approximately 10 minutes (however long it takes for water to boil in your area with your preferred method)

What you need:

A mug of some kind

Some whiskey, 1 shot

Some hot water

honey, however much you want to make this shit taste good

a touch of lemon, either fresh-squeezed if that’s your thing or do what I do and buy the bottle of lemon juice at the store for other recipes

Directions

Heat up the water. Whether you do this in your microwave, in a kettle, in pot, just heat that shit up so it’s hot.

Put your shot your cup. Pour the water in the cup.

Put in a smidge of lemon juice.

Pour honey and stir until it is to your liking.

Done! Enjoy!

Super easy. Uses shit you got in your pantry. Warms you up inside out. And who doesn’t love a little something extra for those bland drinks you usually have to live with.

Why is it easy? With all the resources available, it’s easy to find stores in your area that sell Tarot deck, as well as find them online. You also have the resources available to here what other people think about a certain from reviews and forums, which can help make you an more informed buyer, especially if you order them from Amazon or what not.

But now the process becomes harder. With all these resources at your disposal, it’s going to feel overwhelming just from the decks available at your local shops.

In this sea of beautiful artwork, differing content, different sizes, and loads of customer reviews, how do you know if you can work with this deck?

While this may be the right question, I want to elaborate for a moment on this particular question. If you’re a beginner like me, I wouldn’t worry about breaking the bank with the most beautiful deck you can find because your materialistic heart says you need it. I know this seems like a call out, but this is the main question I want you to focus on when you look at a deck, can you REALLY work with this deck? Can you picture yourself handling the cards over and over? Is the finish glossy enough for traditional shuffles (since if you’re like me, you haven’t quite picked up the hang of shuffling the standard sized Tarot which is larger than an average deck)? Is the deck a good size for your hands (I have very small child-like hands, which makes this an issue for me)? Can you imagine doing spreads and readings with these cards?

I know this seems like a lot to consider, but it’s helped me get two good decks off Amazon without ever touching them in person.

But my favorite little piece of advice, I found from Marie Kondo on her new Netflix series. Although her series is about organizing your home using the KonMari method, she asks her clients something very important about their stuff. ‘Does this spark joy?’ It totally floors me every time I use it, because some things you have to keep around (say a hammer for emergency repairs) but other things, you don’t have to hold onto (like a dress from your 8th grade Sadie Hawkins dance). So ask yourself this when you look at a new deck, especially if you’re online shopping. If you can’t see yourself holding this deck, working this deck, feeling joy and growth from this deck, then don’t bother to get it.

Unless you’re going to start an art collection of Tarot cards. Then go for it, I suppose.

I’m not trying to scare you off buying a deck. But I don’t want you to pick a stunning deck for you to work with it twice and realize it just isn’t for you. It would be like investing in a Ferrari for your first car only to find out you only like driving Civics (nothing wrong with either vehicle just a comparison of how even though the luxury is there, you may be comfortable with something that you can beat up a little since you’re still learning). But just take the time to research and investigate before you decide on a deck to save yourself from having decks piling up in your house, pouring out of cabinets and drawers, overflowing closets, spilling from under the beds and piled in the sink.

I know how midterms and finals week can be. Your anxiety is up, your sleep is down and the only thing keeping you going is your third pot of coffee and adrenaline from the stress.

So how do you keep your caffeine high going? Or how do you come down from the caffeine when you’re done for the night?

To keep your caffeine buzz going strong there’s going to be two things you need to keep in mind. More coffee and alternative fuel. As in, food. If you have something to cushion the coffee or energy drink, then it will last longer and you won’t have to worry about a caffeine crash or a blood sugar crash, which will make you feel just as tired.

So pad your coffee intake with some of these delicious snacks that go well with coffee:

Some trail mix

Some nuts (my favorite ;))

Some toast or a plain bagel with a hazelnut spread (you know the kind I’m talking about)

Some plain ass toast (or bread if you don’t have a toaster handy)

Or smear some peanut butter or jelly on that toast for something a little more filling

Some peanut M&Ms (also another fave)

Basically anything starchy and/or chocalatey

Just get something in your belly to keep you actually energized with real calories.

But what about when you finish your study craze and need to settle in for the night?

It’s a process but it’ll work if you give it the time.

Start drinking water between cups of coffee to keep your belly full and dilute how much coffee you have in your system.

If you have enough foresight, switch to decaf an hour or so before you have to go to sleep.

Once you finish your task or assignment, take a hot shower or go through your night time routine.

Once you finish up, you should start to feel the tiredness creeping back. So crawl under your covers and relax. If you have trouble falling asleep, I have a little trick; count backwards from 99. It may not work for you, but when I do it, I find it helps to make my mind relax and not wander off to what if’s, which can really help if you really need get to sleep fast.

So what should you do when you have too much caffeine and start feeling weird and jittery?

Start drinking water. Literally anything other than caffeine. Now, don’t down 4 gallons of water expecting a quick fix. You have to let your organs do their jobs and filter the caffeine out.

Eat some food. You need real calories in your system to help combat the caffeine crash. So grab some lunch or breakfast or whatever.

Do some stretches and shake out your arms and legs. Put that useless energy to work for you. Don’t go overboard and go to the gym to pound weights and #legday. Just get some of that energy out a little bit to help feel less jittery and anxious.

Don’t panic. Caffeine can heighten your anxiety levels, which around finals week is shooting through the roof. Stay calm and focus on something easy, like an essay you were already half-finished with or an extra credit study guide. If you’ve eaten, drank some water and taken a short break, you shouldn’t be panicking yet.

I know midterms and finals are hard. I know staying up late and trying to get to class on time during this week is hard af. But please be careful drinking copious amounts of caffeine, especially if you are a freshmen out on your own for the first time and have no clue how a bunch of caffeine effects you.

And a little ending note; if at anytime you feel completely horrible while you cram with your caffeine buddy and these tricks aren’t helping to cut the edge, don’t be afraid to contact a health official or a doctor. Caffeine overdose can happen and the best way to keep studying is NOT DYING.

So this is one of witchcraft’s more commonly portrayed aspects in modern media. Everyone knows of the crazy old gypsy woman reading Tarot cards and palms at her velvet-covered shop with a big ass crystal ball and jars filled with unmentionable items.

While some of this is true for witchcraft (looking at all those memes about mason jar hoarding), Tarot is way more basic than that.

Tarot decks are made up of 78 cards. These cards are split into two main categories, Major arcana and Minor arcana. Major arcana makes up 22 cards of the deck and have all the most famous cards, like The Lovers and Death. The Minor arcana cards make up the remaining 56 cards of the deck and are split into four suits, like a standard deck of cards.

However, the suits are different than a standard deck. Where a standard deck is made up of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, a Tarot deck is made up of Cups, Pentacles, Swords, and Wands. Now the Tarot suits do coincide with regular suits, so if you’re trying to be sneaky or looking for a new Tarot challenge, you can use a regular deck just as you would a Tarot deck. Cups coincide with Hearts, Pentacles with Diamonds, Swords with Spades, and Wands with Clubs.

An interesting note about the Major arcana is that although they are numbered, they are numbered from 0 to 21, instead of 1 to 22. We’ll go over more of the Major arcana later on.

Tarot is a form of divination magic, like reading tea leaves or casting oracle bones. Another form of card divination is using oracle cards, which are different than Tarot cards because oracle cards can come in different kinds of deck sizes and content, whereas Tarot is normally based on one set standard.

Tarot decks are usually illustrated and based off the Rider-Waite Tarot deck structure. Most decks use their face illustrations off the standard Rider-Waite deck that’s been in print since 1910 and are considered the standard for Tarot decks. Nowadays, there are many illustrators creating their own stylistic face illustrations for their own Tarot decks, drawing from the Rider-Waite deck as the foundation.

Speaking of the Rider-Waite deck, many pros agree that to start learning with a deck based on the Rider-Waite deck since it is such a common and accessible deck. As well as being the most common deck available, since everyone uses it basically, the resources online are countless if you need help interpreting a card or learning a new spread. Besides online, Tarot has been around since the Middle ages, meaning that there are books upon books you can reference, although some books reference how Tarot was used as a simple card game before it was used for divination purposes.

That’s just some of the basics involving Tarot. With a topic this old and rich, there’s always more to explore and discover and learn.

Because of the nature of retail, you have to give up weekends more often than not. Which doesn’t bother me as much as being told last minute by my managers that my weekends were indefinitely revoked until further notice.

But that’s not the point here. The point I’m making is that working retail is a soul-sucking hell for one major reason; you get to devote so many of your waking hours and energy to a retail job that it’s hard to make plans with friends or even to do your favorite hobbies anymore.

Why?

You spend all day busting your ass hoping for a raise or a promotion so you don’t have to work 60 hours a week to eat, just 40 hours. But you can’t make plans because you either a) don’t know when you’re getting off work or b) have to go in super early (i had scheduled shifts that started at 4 am. 4. In. The. Morning.). So your constantly exhausted.

Then you’re so tired that your hobbies aren’t fun anymore because you don’t have the energy to do them.

I loved to read and knit and go camping and ride dirt bikes and go to the lake and boating with my family in the summertime. I used to love working out with my sister and running with my dogs. But I can’t muster up any extra energy after being at work for anywhere between 9 and 13 hours a day.

I don’t want to do anything physical because I literally worked out for 6+ hours of the work day. And reading and knitting are out the window too, because I can’t muster up enough emotional energy to be interested in those activities because I spend so much of my time at work also dealing with drama.

Is there a way to get back into your hobbies while working retail? Sure. Just find something that you can do anytime of day and do it for the 10 extra minutes have every morning before going to work. That’s it.

Now, I know some people may come up into this post and say ‘oh, well sounds like you have depression and you should go see someone about that.’ That’s nice buddy. I do know what the symptoms of depression are, but this is just exhaustion. These tasks still interest me, but I just can’t bring myself to actually do them because I’ll be more tired than before and it will make my exhaustion-fueled short fuse even shorter. And if I do have depression, how do you think I can pay for a doctor and medication and a therapist with my slightly over minimum wage pay and the minuscule free time I do possess? Because then seeing the therapist would become my hobby instead of sleeping or watching a comedy special on Netflix with my boyfriend or talking to my sister about her day after she gets off work or talking to my parents while they deal with the Big Family Shit going on in my family.

All I’m saying is that say goodbye to your hobbies when you start retail because if the fluorescent lights don’t suck out your soul first, the painful work schedule will demolish it.

We all know about the witch hunts where many woman were burned at the stake or drowned for any reason at all. Witchcraft was more of a blanket term back them to describe anyone who wasn’t fitting in with societal norms.

But witchcraft itself has somehow persevered through the years and is seeing a resurgence of late as more and more women are delving into the history behind it and are finding that it is a much more open community than originally led to believe. Not only is it an open community where members are more than willing to teach and answer questions about witchcraft and wicca, but it is also becoming a more holistic approach to spirituality than other forms of organized religion.

Some of these benefits include worshiping who you want without any guidelines on exactly how you HAVE to worship your deity. You also can pick from across cultures all around the world to find a deity that actually suits you and your life instead of a monotheistic religion. Not only is the spirtuality aspect a major winner of why so many people are turning to witchcraft and wicca, but the fact that many attributes of spell work and witchcraft itself revolve around nature and appreciating nature.

So for some who are wiccan, a day at church could be hiking a local mountain and cleaning up litter, or taking a walk through the woods and appreciating the nature that surrounds their area, or maybe it means going down to a local park and sketching some of the squirrels and birds to give as offerings to a deity. I personally understand how any of these activities, done with the proper reverence, beat sitting in a musty old church all morning listening to a man try to interpret a book instead of doing so myself.

Now before I get carried away, let me make a disticntion.

Wiccan is the nontraditional belief system (however considering witchcraft has existed longer than organized religion, maybe this should be considered traditional) of worshiping Non-Christian deities and more than one deity. Most people refer to it as a form of paganism and I guess it counts on a purely technical basis, considering how the dictionary defines words.

Witchcraft is the blanket term for practicing various forms of magic, usually in correlation to a deity, but not always.

So you can be wiccan and practice witchcraft or you can be wiccan and not practice witchcraft, or you can practice witchcraft and not be wiccan. But that’s the beauty of witchcraft. It give you the options and choices to grow spiritually how you want to and with what suits you.

Does this make witchcraft evil? In the eyes of some of the more extreme Christian groups, yes. But for one group who believes that being gay is wrong and that vaccinating your kids is wrong and that divorce is wrong and that only one person has the answer and the other that appreciates other cultures and nature and works primarily to bring about positive solutions to problems… You can see where I’m going with this right?

So maybe you can see why I’m getting into witchcraft. I can do my own thing without have to play into the notion that only one god exists to try to explain the vast amount of uncertainties in the world. Or maybe I’m just an old-fashioned kind of girl 😉

big bag of gummy bears (whichever brand you prefer, I always get the biggest bag possible for multiple batches)

a big bottle of regular vodka (whichever brand you prefer, I always just get the cheapest, biggest bottle I can find)

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 12 hours

Step 1: Fill container 2/3 with gummy bears

Step 2: Pour vodka over gummy bears until just covered

Step 3: Put lid on container and put in fridge overnight

This is the best make-ahead party treat (for adults, duh) and it stays in the fridge pretty well until you want/need them. I usually just keep a jar in the fridge for a fun little something on Friday nights to treat myself for getting through the week. Because nothing says happiness like gummy bears and alcohol.

To start off my new series of Tarot posts, I just want to go over some basic stuff with you.

For starters, this is more of a way to document my learning of the Tarot deck than to be used as an absolute guide. One of the best study methods is to teach the concept to someone else, so by writing it all down and teaching the internet about it, it should help me learn it all better too.

Secondly, I’m not claiming I’m an expert. Yet. So if you see something wrong, shoot me an email or comment on the post. I’m open to learning anything and everything.

Thirdly, I plan on posting every few days, so I’m not going all out all at once.

Any comments or questions, please let me know. This is definitely a group journey at this point!